I’ve been having mulling over game design and mechanics. One thing I noticed in my research is the categories of game mechanics that are listed on the sidebar of games on BGG. I was curious about the different categories and was a little more than shocked to see the full list was 192 mechanisms.
A lot of effort was put into creating all these different variations, but I am going to simplify this just for the sake of my sanity. I want to start with a broad overview and then slowly get into more of the smaller details.
The questions that really started this train of thought is: what is a board game? Which was derived off: what is an escape room? When broken down to simple terms, an escape room has puzzles, an “enclosed” area, a time limit, and a goal.
And when narrowing escape rooms down, I came to realize that board games also have some major categories they break down into, but not all are shared within all games. I am not sure it’s possible to get into all of the board game mechanics without writing a book, so I decided to focus on the following:
types of mechanic
Uncertainty are games that have betting and bluffing, push your luck, hidden info, or memory components
Deck Building includes games where you increase your resources but only have access to a limited number of resources per turn and cycle through all of them.
Area Control involves controlling areas on a map or section through various methods, usually having the most of your own pieces.
Auctions are using resources in order to get other resources (such as actions, cards, victory points, etc.).
Trick-Taking involves using cards within hand to get a desired outcome. This can include winning tricks by playing the highest number of the correct suit or being the first to get rid of your hand (shedding).
Set Collection involves collecting resources to achieve a certain number of different or similar items.
So, tell me, are there any other important ones you think I should have talked about?
Uncertainty
Out of all the mechanics, I probably know the least about because it is one that I typically steer away from. Uncertainty is more about guessing and less about randomness. Most games have some form of randomness baked into them – weather that be a deck of cards or a blind tile draw. The uncertainty mechanic is more about the hidden info other players have or pulling a card / tile for an immediate effect.
Looking at hidden info, I feel a game like “Guess Who” would be about right. I will try to stick with more common / known games but I’m not sure I will always be able to. But in this game, each player knows something that the other player is trying to find out. So, hidden information.
The push your luck side of uncertainty is more along the lines of “Blackjack”. If you’re not a professional player counting cards, then you probably don’t know what card will be revealed next. Choosing to play the odds and draw another card to get a better score is what I would consider pushing your luck. If you’re lucky, you get a better score, and if you’re unlucky then you’re out of the game.
Deck Building
Deck building mechanics is under the overall umbrella of cards, but it is near and dear to my heart, so I want to give it a spotlight. My board game journey basically started with a deck builder called “Dominion”. In this game, every player starts out with the same 10 cards in their deck. And every turn, they draw 5 cards.
What makes a deck builder is what you do after this point. There will be a market of cards that you can buy from in order to add more cards into your deck. And as the game goes on, the players will deviate more and more from each other.
“Dominion” is a pure deck builder with no other parts but there are some that incorporate board (and other mechanics) like “The Quest for El Dorado” or “Trains”. While deck building sounds like the ultimate goal would be gaining a bunch of cards, there is an amount of deck thinning needed to make a monster of a deck.
Area Control
I have recently had an existential crisis with this mechanic. Area control is all about gaining control over the board state. The most classic example of area control is “Risk”. Which also highlights the question, “Am I doing an imperialism?” The whole game is about taking control of the map that is representative of our world. I know it’s just a game, but I have so many mixed feelings…
Anyway, putting aside the existential dread, one of the games I play the most is “Root”. This game is, at its core, about area control. Area control makes it easier to fulfill victory conditions and therefor, players are incentivized to take more areas than other players.
Honestly, when I started looking around, I realized how many games have this mechanism placed into them. Even ones that seem a bit innocuous. Claiming part of a board is still claiming part of a board, even if that’s being used to plant flowers.
auctions
Everything is an auction. Just kidding. But at lot of games have some part of auctions within the game mechanics. The most well known would be “Monopoly”. In the game, when you land on unclaimed property (are we doing area control again?), if you choose not to buy then the property goes up for auction.
Players go around the table putting down how much they are willing to pay or increase their earlier bid in order to have the highest bid. Highest bid wins the property. Seems simple enough! Although, growing up, I did not know about this rule and unbought property just sat until someone else landed on it. Which is a pretty wild change.
Auctions are typically connected to game that simulate an economic state is someway. Leveraging your resources to get something that will either increase your resources or your value is the core. One of the funniest versions of this is “Sidereal Confluence”. I love this game but yelling at a table of 8 asking for two green cubes in exchange for a blue cube feels a bit goofy. Also, adrenaline inducing…
trick Taking
Both this and deck building fall under a broader category of cards but I felt that trick taking was unique enough of a mechanic to make a separate category. I grew up playing a trick taking game without realizing that’s what it was. That game is “Hearts”. It was one of the games that naturally came installed on computers when I was a kid.
In trick takers, you have a hand of cards. The hand is either used to gain points (like in hearts) or you are trying to be the first person to get rid of their hand. In games about points, the general game loop I see is that each player puts down one card. The leading card decides the suit that matters for the round, and whoever has the highest in suit wins the trick. The goal of these games is have the most tricks won by the time everyone is out of cards.
With a shedding game, there are ways to play multiple cards at the same time. One the biggest example in my mind is “Tycoon” which I was introduced to, funnily enough, by a video game. Having a board game within a video game truly amuses me. Anyway, instead of having rounds, the game goes around the table until everybody, but the last player passes. At that point, the table clears and whoever played last gets to start the new round.
Trick takers are great because they are made from decks to cards. This makes them very portable and accessible to a lot of people. But, of course, there are always variations that add more layers of complexity.
Set Collection
One of the last mechanics I wanted to highlight is set collection. I think one of the most classic example of set collection is “Go Fish”. Players are trying to collect set of cards with the same number. Whoever gets the most sets wins. “Go Fish” is very much a bare bones version of this mechanism with the only interaction being stealing cards from other players hands.
Then there are games like “Set” where players share a field and being the first to spot a pattern is the one who get to keep the set. Of course, there are games than incorporate set collection in a more complicated manner but at it’s core, the game wants you to be a hoarder. And I will follow that instinct.
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